The Pirate Bay founders have launched a new file-sharing platform today. After leaving the world famous torrent site, two of the original founders are now back with a one-click file-hosting service called Bayfiles. Although Hollywood wont be cheering them on, unlike The Pirate Bay the new service is dedicated to respecting copyrights while offering its users a great platform to store and share files.

In the fall of 2003, a group of friends from Sweden decided to launch a BitTorrent tracker named ‘The Pirate Bay’.

In the years that followed the BitTorrent site made history as it grew to become one of the most recognized brands on the Internet.

At a time where cyberlockers are quickly catching up with BitTorrent as the preferred way to share files online, today the founders of The Pirate Bay launch a brand new file-sharing venture called Bayfiles. One of the main reasons for this move is to provide users with a more reliable option for sharing and storing files.

“BitTorrent is increasingly throttled or even filtered by ISPs, HTTP usually is not,” Bayfiles co-founder Fredrik Neij tells TorrentFreak.

“Storage and transfers on Bayfiles also preserve users’ privacy. And another advantage is that users can be sure that content stays up, which is important for personal backups. It also guarantees that other personal files such as your MP3 collection are always accessible, so users are able to stream it live to any device,” Fredrik says.

Bayfiles works similarly to other one-click-hosting services such as Megaupload, RapidShare and Hotfile. With just a single click, users can upload files to the Bayfiles server, and then easily share them with the online public. The site itself offers no search functionality or file directory to find content that other people have uploaded.

Bayfiles

A novelty, compared to The Pirate Bay, is that Bayfiles will respect the DMCA and accept copyright infringement notices. The terms of service clearly state that content that “violates third-party copyrights” is not permitted to be uploaded. It further states that repeat infringers will have their account disabled “regardless of proof of infringement.”

How strictly the above policy will be enforced is yet to be seen, but co-founder Fredrik Neij told TorrentFreak that their Hong Kong based company Bayfiles Limited has officially registered DMCA agents. After all the trouble they had to go through in court for The Pirate Bay, Fredrik and former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde want to avoid running into more trouble with their new venture.

Looking forward, Neij told TorrentFreak that Bayfiles will be much more than just a simple cyberlocker. There are ideas to expand it into a more feature rich cloud hosting service comparable to the likes of Dropbox. As with The Pirate Bay, the ultimate goal is to make sharing both effortless and efficient.

As for the features, unregistered users can share files up to 250MB, regular members have a limit of 500MB and premium members can upload files as large as 5GB with unlimited storage. The premium accounts do come at a price, 5 euros per month or 45 euros for a full year. Unlike other cyberlockers, Bayfiles does not offer a reward program where uploaders of popular content can be paid for their services.

In the past The Pirate Bay founders have launched many side-projects, with varying success. None of these projects ever rivalled the popularity of The Pirate Bay, but if one site can outgrow the famous BitTorrent site in terms of users, it certainly is Bayfiles.

The popularity of cyberlockers has increased exponentially in recent years. Just a few days ago we reported that 8 of the 10 largest English language file-sharing sites are related to cyberlockers, each with hundreds of millions of pageviews a month. It is not unthinkable that Bayfiles will join this list in the future.

In terms of copyright law, Bayfiles is a perfectly legal operation as long as the site doesn’t encourage or promote copyright infringement. Previously a U.S. federal court ruled that RapidShare, a competing file-hosting service, is not liable for any copyright infringements its users may commit.

That said, we doubt whether Hollywood will be happy with this new venture from a team of people who’ve been their arch rivals for more than half a decade. Exciting times ahead.

Update: According to Google Bayfiles was removed because its pages were seen as “pure spam.” The Bayfiles team filed an appeal and has yet to receive a response.